2 comments on “The Gas Poker”

the first lines all end with “oh”… but tucked into another word, thus secreted, as it were, and all the more potent. The “oh” is alone in being not rhymed in the stanza. thus isolate and stressed somewhat. the rest of each stanza seems to act (although being cumulatively far longer than the first line) as a refrain or chorus. as though the “oh” were the actual thrust, and the subsequent verse were the thought that followed. The centre of this poem perhaps is that “hidden” “oh!”, being still audible from all that time back, but somewhat necessarily part-obscured by being hidden in another word.